Sway with Me
by NCCJFAN
Summary: Ballroom Dance. Woody and Jordan. Dancing with the Stars? No. Just lots of fluffy romance.
1. It's Kind of Like Going to the Movies

**It's been a while since I started a new story. This one is a little different. I seem to have picked up a bad case of the fluff bunnies. I'm not sure if I caught them from Jo (jmkw/cjfann) or if my own little hutch of bunnies finally came home. I cleaned out their cage just in case they decide to stay.**

**Some of you know my passion for ballroom dance. It's really my second career. It seemed inevitable that eventually I would project my hobby on my two favorite characters. A lot of what happens on this ballroom floor comes from my personal experience. And as the story progresses, you'll see why dancers will tell you that ballroom dance is a little like making love with everyone watching. So it's also inevitable that this is a Jordan/Woody saga**

**Oh, by the way. I don't own anything. But like my friend Nyn, I'm willing, able, and ready to stage a takeover.**

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* * *

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_Sway wth Me_

Chapter One

It's Kind of Like Going to the Movies

_Another Monday morning...another work week_, Jordan thought as the elevator doors opened and spilled her out into the busy hallway of the morgue

Another work day that would bleed into another work week, complete with doubles and night shifts. She shook her head. Her life was now predictable, orderly, nearly _scheduled_ since she had gotten back to Boston after her DC hiatus.

Okay, it wasn't _exactly_ a hiatus. She had been on the run. But now JD's real killer had been found, the DA had backed down, and Jordan's name had been cleared. _That was all that really mattered…_ or so she kept telling herself. She had her job back.

Now if she could just get her life back. She walked down the corridor to her office and opened the door, dropping her pocketbook down on her desk. There was a neat pile of mail on its surface, presumably left by Emmy after the ME had gone home yesterday.

_Forensic Journal, bill, bill…a card? _Jordan felt her breath catch in her throat as the sight of the familiar handwriting tugged at her memory. She had talked to him briefly after she had returned to Boston. As a matter of fact, he had somehow heard of her plight and phoned Garret to make sure she was okay while she was on the run. They had a longer phone conversation last week. A glance at the clock on her desk told her it was time to go to work, that the card really needed to wait, but she tore it open anyway.

_Hi Sweetheart,_

_You've been on my mind since we talked the other night. It sounds like you've been working too much. And after what you've been through, that's not a good thing. So here's a little something that I hope will make you feel better. I understand this is quite a popular past time now, since there are several TV shows about it . Go out and have a good time on your old man._

_Love, _

_Dad_

Jordan fingered the gift certificate before she tucked it away inside her pocketbook. Max was right. She had been working too many hours, but work had always been the way she coped in the past. It had been her panacea and in many ways the cure-all that righted her world.

For some reason this time it wasn't working. So maybe her father's gift made sense. Maybe it was what she needed….

"Jordan, autopsy room one? We need you, love," Nigel called from the doorway.

"Be right there."

Resolutely she decided to put the gift certificate into play at lunch.

* * *

The Millington Ballroom Dance Studio wasn't hard to find. Its gleaming brick and copper façade stood out in the afternoon sunlight. And even if you could overlook that, the beat of the music reverbing on the outside was another dead giveaway. Jordan pushed opened the doors of the building.

"Can I help you?" A British accent from woman at the desk immediately caught her attention.

"Um. My dad gave me this…I wanted to set up a time…." Jordan handed off the gift certificate to her.

The woman glanced at the piece of paper. "Your dad must love you a lot. It's for six months worth of lessons with the option to re-up after that if you still want to…" Her face broke out into a grin. "My name is Melanie. Have a seat, and I'll give you the form to fill out."

"I guess no job is finished until the paperwork is done," Jordan joked as she took the clipboard with the form from Melanie and sat down in one of the chairs in the reception area.

"Nope. I think goes for every job, too," Melanie answered. "But here, we keep it pretty brief."

And the form was short. Name. Address. E-mail. Phone. That was the easy part. But at the end was a list of dances….Jordan had to circle the ones she was most interested in. Some of the names were familiar. Others….weren't. She held the form up for Melanie to see and pointed to the last question. "What if I don't know..."

"Then circle them all. You've got plenty of time."

One bold pencil mark later, the deed was done. Jordan was enrolled in classes.

"Let me explain how we operate," Melanie continued when she took the form from Jordan. "Once a week, you'll have a private lesson with your primary instructor. After about three months, you'll get what we call a 'buddy' instructor. While both of your teachers are proficient in smooth and rhythm dances, one's strength will be the smooth and the other's strength will be rhythm. At that point, you'll alternate teachers. One week you'll have the smooth guy and the next week you'll have the rhythm.

"Meanwhile, on Mondays and Fridays we have what we call social dancing times, when you'll come with the other students and for an hour you get to dance with all the teachers and some of the students. On Tuesday nights we have a salsa class and Wednesday we have a minors class….." Melanie prattled on for the next five minutes before she realized she had totally lost Jordan. "You have questions…"

"What's minors?"

"Those are the dances your teachers won't get to emphasize so much in your lessons…Samba, West Coast Swing, Bolero, Viennese Waltz…."

It still sounded like a foreign language to Jordan, but she nodded like she understood. "Then I guess I need to make an appointment for my first lesson?"

"Do you have thirty minutes now?"

Another nod.

"Good. Have a seat. Mike will be with you in a minute."

* * *

"First thing you have to do is relax," Mike instructed as he steered Jordan's stiff frame around the first turn in the main ballroom.

"Sorry…I've just never done this before…"

"It's easy. Really. You just have to learn to listen to the music and let your body respond. Have you ever danced before?"

"Ballet. When I was a kid. Then the typical club scene when I was in college."

Mike stopped. "Okay. This is a little different. But it is kind of like going to the movies."

Jordan gave him a skeptical look as she glanced at another couple that appeared to be gliding across the floor with little effort. "Really?"

Mike grinned. "It is. All ballroom dance is composed of basically four steps." He took Jordan's arm. "First, we're going to have to go to the theater. For the sake of things, let's pretend it's not too far away. So we'll ….?"

"Walk?"

"Exactly." He began to walk around the ballroom with her. "That's the first step in ballroom dance. The forward walk. Now we're here at the movie." He stopped. "But it's so crowded, we can hardly move. There's a man with a woman in a wheelchair that needs to get his wife inside before it starts raining, but the line is so crowded we can't turn around and give him room. In order to get out of his way, we have to back up." He began walking backwards with her. "That's the second step. A backward walk.

"Now," he continued. "That's over and we're inside and found our seats. But we have to walk past several people to get to them." He started walking to the side. "That's the third step. The side step. It's also called the chasse'." Mike stopped and slapped his forehead with his hand. "How could we forget popcorn? It's not a movie without popcorn…" He moved sideways the other way, pretending to get back out into the theater aisle to go to the concession stand. "The side steps can go left to right or right to left.

"See ballroom dance is just like going to the movies…." He grinned at Jordan.

"Um. Yeah. But it looks a little more complicated than that."

Mike nodded. "But all dances contain those three steps and one more, the rock step. And this will be one I just have to demonstrate, because I haven't figured out a way to work it into going to the movies." Right foot in front, bent, left foot behind, and a slight shift of the weight gave it the appearance of rocking the weight from foot to foot. "All dances have a rock step, but in smooth dances, it's called a 'check'."

Jordan nodded. The terminology was getting to be a bit much. Forward walk…backward walk…rock step…side step….smooth…rhythm.

Evidently her confusion showed on her face and Mike chuckled. "It'll come. In two weeks, you'll know them like the back of your hand."

Another skeptical look.

"You will. I promise. Now let's try a few of these to music…."

To Jordan's surprise, the remaining thirty minutes flew by. An even bigger surprise was that Mike had been right. It wasn't long before she was comfortable with the steps and combining them. She was just a little bit disappointed when he told her the lesson was over and he'd schedule her for another one at the end of the week.

The biggest surprise of all?

She was looking forward to it.


	2. Come Fly With Me

**Chapter Two**

**Come Fly with Me**

_The Foxtrot_

* * *

"Where's she going?"

Nigel was eyeing the rapidly retreating back of Dr. Cavanaugh as she raced for the elevator and just managed to slide in through the closing doors with grace.

"Jordan?" Garret asked, lifting his eyes from the autopsy report that was commanding his attention at the moment.

Nigel nodded. "For the past month, she's left here like a bat out of hell after she gets off work. We can't talk her into going with us to the Beef-n-Brew or a movie or…well, anything."

Garret nodded. "I know. But she promised me that if I'd let her out of here on time at least three nights a week, she'd pull weekends whenever I asked her with no problems. And she's lived up to her part of the bargain."

Pondering for a second, Nigel raised a boney finger to his lips, tapping them in contemplation. "I wonder what she's up to?"

"What do you mean, _what she's up to_?" A tone of suspicion ringed Garret's voice.

"I simply mean," Nigel said, trying his best to contemplate his boss, "is that by nature, our Jordan is a solitary creature, but she has always carved out some time for her friends in the past. A beer. A meal. A movie night. But the truth is, outside of work, we've barely seen her since she got back from DC. I just am concerned…."

"Concerned or nosey?"

"Concerned. You know that sometimes she's nearly gone off the deep end in the past and it's taken you_ and_ Woody to pull her back."

This time, Garret shook his head. "I don't think that's it. For one thing, she hasn't missed a day of work. The second thing, she's acting fairly normal. She interacts with us at work. She does her job well. She's not involved in any hinky case that might give her a whiff of a clue about her mother's murder and JD's murder is solved. So I don't think Jordan's anywhere near any deep end."

"But still….don't you wonder what she's doing?"

Another shake of Garret's head. "That's Jordan's business."

"I wonder if she's found a man…"

"No." Garret shut his case file. "It's too soon after JD. In many ways, she's still grieving him. He may not have been 'the one', but she did care for him and she certainly didn't want anything to happen to him. No. I don't think the reason she's leaving early has anything to do with a _man_."

"But don't you wonder…"

"Look, Nigel. She's home. She seems to be half-way back to normal. She's not batting around any conspiracy theories over any homicide. Her mother's, JD's or otherwise. She looks like she's resting and eating well. Maybe, since this the morgue is the place where a lot of her troubles have started, she feels the need to put some distance between it and her. Maybe she's trying to develop a life outside of here. Something she should have done years ago, but we never encouraged or in many ways, allowed her to do. So, unless there's some evidence that tells us otherwise, I think we should leave her alone."

* * *

"Okay, Jordan. Think smooth," Mike ordered.

Ballroom dancing was many things – grace, finesse, and beauty. No one told Jordan that the instructors were drill sergeants in a former life. Mike pulled her into frame. "In foxtrot, you have to think about rolling your feet. This isn't like rhythm where you stay on the balls of your feet. In smooth, when the balls of your feet are on the floor, you're heels are up. When the heels are on the floor, the balls are up. If I were looking at you from the side, I shouldn't be able to tell if you are walking forwards or backwards."

Easier said than done. The foxtrot, as beautiful as it was, had no body rise to help you with your feet. Your head remained level. When one foot was releasing the heel, the other was releasing the ball of the foot. Unlike the waltz, there was no leg rise, no body rise, or even foot rise to help.

_Dancing with the Stars_ didn't make it look so complicated.

"And stop pulling my left arm down. You're supposed to follow the man. For once in your life, you're supposed to do what the man leads you to do…" Mike continued to order, this time with a teasing tone to his voice.

"What if the man doesn't know what the hell he's doing? Generally speaking that is, present company excluded." Jordan fought to keep a straight face.

Mike's blue eyes twinkled. "It's the man's job to make the woman look good on the dance floor. It's the woman's job to follow." He led her into promenade position. "But of course, as a woman, you always reserve the right to refuse a man a dance. That is, anyone but the teachers."

Jordan snorted. As if she would. There were five male teachers at Millington Studio. All of them were first class. She had been attending salsa and minors classes. This last week she finally had worked up the courage to come to a social dance, where she finally got the chance to dance with all the instructors. Despite her novice status, they had been very patient and Jordan quickly overcame her nervousness. She found if she relaxed slightly, it was easier to follow.

"Core. Remember your core." Another order from Mike.

"I am tight in my abdomen."

Mike shook his head. "Your core is from mid-thigh to your breasts"

"Oh." _I'm supposed to tighten my breasts?_ Fred and Ginger had made this stuff look easy.

Two more turns around the ballroom and they were done. Jordan had advanced from half hour lessons to hour long ones. By the end of this time, her hair was wet with sweat and she felt like she had run a mile. This stuff was great cardiovascular activity and had completely dissipated her stress levels. "So how'd I do today?" she asked Mike as he wrote down her progress in a white notebook labeled, "Jordan."

"Good. You're really advancing rather quickly."

"Really? After all those orders from you today, I kind of wondered."

"Corrections. Not orders." Mike shut the notebook and filed it on a shelf under "C" for Cavanaugh. "So how's the shoes feeling?"

Mike had urged her to order real ballroom shoes after her third lesson. The soles of these shoes were made for gliding across the dance floor, but yet would grip it for rhythm, and the arches were particularly made for ballroom dancing. The arch of these shoes had titanium support, so despite the fact they were four inches in height, you could literally walk around in them all day and your feet would be fine.

The satin straps were another story.

"I guess I'll get used to the blisters?"

He chuckled. "Word of advice that Allison told me. Take them home. Put on a pair of guy's athletic socks and then put on the shoes. Walk around in them while you clean or whatever. The thick socks will stretch the straps and you'll avoid blisters."

Jordan nodded. Allison was a female instructor at the studio. Jordan had learned early on that Mike and Alli had been dating for nearly 18 months. They were partners in life as well as professional dance partners.

"That kind of happens," Melody had explained to her after one of Jordan's lessons. "You haven't gotten to this point yet, but ballroom dancing is a lot like making love in public."

Jordan's jaw had dropped noticeably and Melody had laughed loud and long. "It is," she insisted. "Just wait. You'll find out. But when two people dance as partners, you find out a _lot_ about each other. And most partners either end up falling in love or hating each other. Simple as that. Mike and Alli ended up falling in love. And it shows in the connection they have on the dance floor. All that man has to do is lock eyes with Alli and he's leading in the best possible way. Visually. She follows his body fluidly. They're not national champs for no reason at all."

"And another thing," Mike said, drawing Jordan out of her thoughts. "It's time for your buddy partner to step in. Next week's lesson will be with John. He's proficient in rhythm."

John. The owner of the studio. The best male instructor there. Jordan swallowed hard, trying her dead-level best not to feel intimidated. Mike grinned at her expression. "If it makes you feel better, _he_ asked for you. Said something about unexplored hip potential and sweet hyper-extended knees."

"What?" Her tone held a lot of questions.

Mike grinned again. "He'll explain next week."

Jordan nodded and turned to go.

"Hey….one other thing." Mike called her back. "There's an amateur comp in three weeks. You should think about entering." He held out an entry form, and she gave him a deer-in-the-head-lights look. "You should. It's a small one. Between us and the studio across town. There'll probably be about twenty couples entering. You'll dance with me."

"I…don't know. I don't feel ready."

"If you wait until you feel ready, you'll never do it. Besides. What else do you have to do on a Sunday afternoon?"

Mike had a point. Jordan took the registration form from his hand and signed her name.


	3. A Little Less Conversation

**Chapter Three**

**A Little Less Conversation**

_The Cha Cha_

"You have to feel the rhythm before you can move," John directed, putting a pounding Latin rhythm on the sound system. "Listen."

Salsa, Mambo, Rumba, Cha Cha – they were all Latin dances. And Jordan had danced Latin many times before. At clubs. Free style. Not under the watchful and critical eye of a ballroom dance teacher.

"What you've got to do is forget everything you know about Salsa or any other Latin dance until you've mastered what we're going to teach you. We're going to start with Cha Cha because in all honesty? That one's pretty easy to learn and it has the most variations."

Jordan shook her head. "Somehow I get these pictures of Lucy and Ricky in my head…"

John laughed. "In a way, you're right. The Cha Cha is actually a hybrid from the Mambo. A bunch of Americans got tired of dancing the Mambo down in Cuba years ago and created the Cha Cha out of it. If you can do this dance, then the Mambo, the Salsa, and the Rumba should come easy."

"Uh-huh." The look Jordan shot him clearly told John there was some disbelief there.

"First, we're going to deal with Latin motion. Your hips and knees have a lot of potential. Latin motion is simply breaking the ankle," John demonstrated by rolling his foot to the side on the floor so it bent out at the joint, "and keeping the same leg bent at the knee and the other leg straight. That's the definition of real Latin motion – broken ankle, bent leg, straight leg. You want your hips to go back and forth, not side to side."

"Like a washing machine?"

"That's right. Just like the spin cycle on a Maytag."

Jordan snorted. Easier said than done.

Jordan had come to realize a lot of this ballroom dance stuff was easier said than done, and easiest watching on TV. It was hard work and required concentration. Both Mike and John told her that eventually her muscles would just "do it from memory." Jordan was pretty sure her muscles had Alzheimer's.

As time passed, she did find out that with the lessons and a bit of practice back home in her Pearle Street apartment, that things did come more naturally. The local competition came and went and she did well. She didn't place, but she didn't expect to. However the judges did give her a good critique and told her to keep up the hard work. It was paying off.

But keeping her sudden departures at five o'clock from her co-workers was getting harder. Jordan had always been known for working past the clock and often off the clock when a case was pressing. Now as soon as her shift was up, she made a bee-line for the exit.

Which raised more than a few eyebrows more than a few times. No questions were asked, but Garret was seriously thinking about asking Woody to have an unmarked follow her after she left work for a few days to make sure she wasn't moonlighting at some off-the-wall detective agency or something.

"You know what would really help," John said, as he snapped her back into frame and back into the reality of her Cha Cha lesson.

"Umm….ballroom shoes with microchips in them that automatically knew all the steps and would program your feet to follow?" In a spare moment of ballroom fantasy, Jordan had toyed with the idea of asking Nigel if he possibly could invent something along these lines.

"No. Then I'd be out of a job and this," John pointed to the ballroom floor and her feet, "would come all too easy. And what comes too easily isn't truly appreciated." He took Jordan by her hand and led her to one of the tables to sign off on her practice notebook. "No, what would be a big help is if you could get one of your male friends to take lessons with you. That would give you someone to practice with all the time and if he came to the social dances with you, you'd end up dancing all the time. Both of you would benefit by getting better and better. And competitions favor amateur/amateur parings. It would be a win-win situation."

Jordan quickly went down her short list of male friends that were still speaking to her. None of them seemed likely candidates. And it showed on her face.

"Come on…it'd be great for them," John coaxed.

"Really? How?"

He ticked off the reasons. "It's great cardiovascular exercise. It helps you lose weight _and_ keep it off. And if any of them have back problems? Ballroom especially works the back muscles. Flexibility and strength in the back and legs are a bonus in ballroom."

_The back muscles…_

"Plus, they'd get to hold a very lovely lady in their arms for an hour, at least three times a week. What other reason could they want?" John finished, a teasing note in his voice. And in a way he was joking with Jordan, not that John didn't find her attractive. However, like Mike, John was engaged to his partner, Karen. They had danced together since they were in high school and all through college, waltzing their way into a professional career together. One day John looked across a competition ballroom at Karen dancing with another male competitor – for fun. John had never been a jealous man, but he had felt a double dose of the emotion that day. By the end of that weekend, he and Karen had an understanding. She was his and he was hers, on and off the ballroom floor.

"So, think you could come up with any takers?" John prodded again.

Jordan shook her head. "I don't know. But I'll try."

* * *

The approach would have to be careful. The delivery? A sales pitch like Jordan had never delivered before. Which ever "male friend" she decided to approach, he had to be sold on the _idea_, not necessarily _her_.

And in the end it only came down to one out of her three closest male friends.

Garret? Too short. With Jordan in the three-and-a-half inch ballroom shoes, she would tower over him. Besides, the man was far too busy to think about putting in a minimum of three hours of practice a week in a ballroom.

So that left two choices: Nigel and …_Woody_.

Jordan had casually left a ballroom dance clothing catalogue out on her desk, hoping to intrigue the clothing-conscious Brit into a conversation. That part worked, but when approached with the reason for the bait, Nigel had backed off.

"I've got two left feet, love."

"So did I when I started."

"No, you don't. I've seen you dance. You're grace and sensuality rolled into one." He sat down on the corner of her desk and thumbed through the catalogue one more time. "Although I must say, some of these outfits…" He held up a page for her perusal. It showed a picture of a male dancer's see-through rhythm shirt. "Tell me, do they have the same sort of outfits for the ladies? If they do, I just might be persuaded." A wicked grin flashed across his face.

"Nigel! I'm serious."

"And I am, too, love." He set the catalogue back down on her desk. "I _do_ have two left feet. I can't dance. I go to my Goth clubs to hang out and drink. Not to shimmy with the ladies. And I don't think I can be taught because no matter how intriguing ballroom dancing would be with you, I can't see us getting 'down and dirty' on the ballroom floor."

"Nigel…it's not like that…" But her mind flashed back to what Melody had told her about ballroom months ago…_When done properly, it's like making love in public with your clothes on…_

Nigel harrumphed. "Yeah, right. I've seen Dancing with the Stars, Jordan. Tell me another one." He reached out one bony finger and traced a pattern on the clothing catalogue. "So why don't you kill the two proverbial birds with one stone?" He caught her brown-eyed gaze with one of his own.

"Two birds?" she asked.

"Yes." Nigel stood up and took her by the shoulders. "Ask Woodrow. A little persuasion and he'd do it. Just give him the same sales pitch you gave me. Include the fact about strengthening the back muscles and spending three uninterrupted hours with you a week outside of work…in his arms." Another wicked grin.

"I don't know, Nige. Things have been…_awkward_ between us since I got back from DC."

"All the more reason, love." Nigel turned and opened the door to leave. "It will help his back and make things right between you two. Right as rain."

And with that, the Brit turned and left, leaving Jordan alone with her thoughts and rehearsing the sales pitch she was going to give to Woody.


	4. It Don't Mean a Thing

**Chapter Four**

**It Don't Mean a Thing…**

_The Swing_

"Come on, Woody…"

"No."

"Please…just listen to me…" Jordan ran after him, grabbing rapidly retreating detective by the arm and turning him back to face her. "I promise, this is _not_ one of my 'hare-brained schemes', as you so politely put it."

The skeptical look Woody gave her spoke his disbelief in volumes. Jordan had cornered him in the break room where he had been making one of his peanut butter sandwiches, telling him she had a great idea but needed his help.

That reeked of one of her hare-brained scheme to crack one of the cases she was working on and she needed his help for something slightly illegal or very unpleasant. "I'm not doing anything that would jeopardize my career or well-being, Jordan." Woody pulled away and Jordan let her hand slip from his arm, finally realizing what he was thinking.

:"Woody. It's not about work."

He turned to face her again. "Not a case?"

"Nope."

"Not a hunch you want me to try to chase down?"

Jordan shook her head.

"Not a piece of evidence, not an illegal search for DNA, not turning a blind eye to your latest breaking and entering?" One eyebrow rose in cynicism.

"No. I told you it had nothing to do with work. At all." She motioned to her office. "Can I talk to you in here?"

Woody hid a frown and stifled a sigh. And suddenly realized how Daniel felt before King Darius threw him into the lions' den.

He had a distinct feeling, no matter what she said, he was about to be eaten alive.

* * *

"Swing requires the third foot position. Both ways – right and left. The only time you get out of it while you're doing the basic is when you have the rock step. And remember, that's really just a check. Keep your weight on your left leg, Woody – Jordan, your right foot -- which should be in the back, but pressure on the ball of the other foot. You're in parallel position, left side, but your hips will torque. 

"Torque?" Woody asked.

"Slightly rotate," Mike answered with a smile, his blue eyes twinkling. "Actually, you're pretty good at this detective. Sure you haven't had ballroom before?"

Woody shook his head and concentrated on the task at hand. _Triple step, triple step, rock step. Triple step, triple step, rock step…_Three steps to two beats of music.

"And parallel on the left side means Jordan is parallel to _your_ left side; you're not parallel to hers. Her right side will be flush with your left. This is one time," Mike continued, stifling a laugh, "that you get to lead her. This time, you're totally in charge and she _has to_ take the cues from you."

"Just in ballroom," Jordan hissed quietly, following his lead into a cuddle step.

"Not if I have my way," Woody hissed back. "You may find you _like_ me being in charge."

"Jordan," Mike interrupted. "What foot are you supposed to be on?"

She stopped so suddenly to think about the answer that Woody nearly stepped all over her. "Right?"

Mike nodded. "Why?" he asked Woody

Woody swallowed hard. "Because women are always right."

Jordan threw him a beatific smile. "And don't you forget it."

Woody returned it and applied gentle pressure to the toes of her right foot.

"Ouch! You did that on purpose…"

"No, darlin'. You just didn't follow my lead…" Woody drawled back, making a face at her.

When Jordan had led him into her office that day, Woody didn't know what to think. The fact that she would bring up something _other_ that work to him was monumental. When it turned out to be ballroom, it was mind-boggling. To the point, he realized he hadn't comprehended a word she said until ten minutes into the sales pitch.

"Huh?"

"What?"

"What did you just say?" Woody asked, absent-mindedly taking the dance catalogue in his hands and rolling it into a tube.

Jordan sighed and prayed for patience. "I said it's a great way to keep in shape. It's wonderful cardiovascular exercise. And ballroom is known for strengthening your back and leg muscles. So you could look at is as another form of physical therapy for your back…"

"No, that's not what I meant…what else did you say?"

"I said it would mean that for three hours a week we'd be able to spend time together. Each lesson is an hour long, so…"

"Three hours."

Jordan nodded.

"Three nights a week, one hour each time?"

Another nod. "There's social dancing, too, if you want to come to that." She swallowed nervously.

"Let me make sure I have this straight. Three hours a week, of uninterrupted time…with you."

"And a dance instructor."

"But we'd be dancing."

"Yes."

"Us. With no interruptions?"

She shook her head this time. "No interruptions."

"Your cell phone would be off?'

"My cell phone will be off. So will yours."

Woody nodded this time. "Okay. Just tell me where I have to be and where I have to sign." It was then he glanced down at the catalogue, still open to the place where Nigel had found the see-through rhythm shirt.

"And for the love of God, tell me I don't have to wear one of these."

"Triple step, triple step, rock step…" Mike's instruction broke in on Woody's train of thought. "Come on… keep the rhythm, stay on time and beat."

* * *

Woody nervously glanced at his watched as he waited in the parking lot of the dance studio. He and Jordan had been taking lessons for a month now, keeping it a secret from everyone at the morgue and the police department. For three hours a week, she was totally his, with no interruptions, other than the instructions from the dance instructor. 

And now? Mike had talked them into coming to an hour of social dancing on Friday night – together. "It's well beyond time you should be doing this," Mike had told Jordan. "And you?" he had turned on Woody then. "If you're going to be her partner, then the extra hour together will do you nothing but good."

_Nothing but good…_

Woody had to agree on more than one level, dancing not the only one. Since Jordan had gotten back from DC, they had worked together, talked, seen each other, but generally all in the context of work. If dancing had to be the platform that launched their relationship again, he was more than willing to use it. Three hours a week, she was back in his arms, even if they were overlooked by a drill-sergeant dance teacher. He could deal with that right now.

So now he was waiting on her to show up for the social dance. She wasn't late. He was early, still he sighed with relief when he saw her El Camino pull into the parking lot. Woody got out of his Chevelle and went to open her car door. "Hey, you made it."

"Think I'd stand you up?" Jordan teased as she got out of the truck and reached for her shoe bag.

"No, but I had the police scanner on just in case there was a call for a ME and your name came across the broadcast."

"O ye of little faith."

"No, I just remember the governor's ball you stood me up for, doing that body run with Bug and getting stuck in the TWT."

"That was a long time ago," Jordan scoffed, taking his arm and letting Woody lead her inside the studio. "Before we were dancing together."

"Jordan," Woody leaned down and whispered in her ear as they went through the door. "We've been dancing for five years. Now it's just in public and on the context of a dance floor…"


End file.
